Remember eating alphabet soup as a child and gathering those tiny letters made from pasta to spell your name? Well, getting the right letters together still matters, and in the healthcare world, three letters to pay close attention to are HCC.

In 2004, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services introduced Hierarchical Condition Category (HCC) coding.

Evaluating patient risk is as old as medicine itself. As early as the fifth century BCE, notes a 2011 study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Hippocratic tradition focused on the prevention of disease through diet and exercise. 

But ancient wisdom works best when combined with modern technology.